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Electricity Deregulation

Choices and Challenges

The electricity market has experienced enormous setbacks in delivering on the promise of deregulation. In theory, deregulating the electricity market would increase the efficiency of the industry by producing electricity at lower costs and passing those cost savings on to customers. As Electricity Deregulation shows, successful deregulation is possible, although it is by no means a hands-off process—in fact, it requires a substantial amount of design and regulatory oversight.

This collection brings together leading experts from academia, government, and big business to discuss the lessons learned from experiences such as California’s market meltdown as well as the ill-conceived policy choices that contributed to those failures. More importantly, the essays that comprise Electricity Deregulation offer a number of innovative prescriptions for the successful design of deregulated electricity markets. Written with economists and professionals associated with each of the network industries in mind, this comprehensive volume provides a timely and astute deliberation on the many risks and rewards of electricity deregulation.

Reviews

“In Electricity Deregulation contributors examine what’s gone wrong with electricity deregulation in the United States and why it has stalled. Not content to simply offer a rehashing of the many mistakes made, the essays in this volume go further than other literature on the topic to propose several policy and technological correctives for moving industry restructuring forward. The high quality of the contributors assembled here and the thoughtfulness of their papers make this a novel and important volume.”--R. Richard Geddes, Cornell University

R. Richard Geddes | R. Richard Geddes

“In contrast to the experience in transportation and telecommunications, electricity deregulation has experienced many difficulties, and there is an ongoing debate concerning how regulatory policy should be reformulated. This volume gathers many of the leading analysts of electricity markets. They provide an analysis of deregulation so far, and of the challenges and prospects for the future. This book will interest both academics and industry participants. The contributors provide a timely and accessible account.”--Robert Porter, Northwestern University

Robert Porter | Robert Porter

“This is a thoughtful, well-researched, and often provocative set of papers that will inform and stimulate debate on this important topic.”--Stephen Littlechild, Judge Institute of Management, University of Cambridge

Stephen Littlechild | Stephen Littlechild

Table of Contents

Introduction: A Primer on Electricity and the Economics of Deregulation
James M. Griffin and Steven L. Puller
Part I - Experiences and Case Studies in Electricity Restructuring
1. The Difficult Transition to Competitive Electricity Markets in the United States
Paul L. Joskow
2. Restructuring the Electricity Industry in England and Wales
Richard Green
3. Lessons from the California Electricity Crisis
Frank A. Wolak
4. Lessons Learned: The Texas Experience
Ross Baldick and Hui Niu
Part II - Policies for Successful Market Design
5. The Efficiency of Electricity Generation in the United States after Restructuring
Catherine Wolfram
6. Looking for Trouble: Competition Policy in the U.S. Electricity Industry
James Bushnell
7. The Oversight of Restructured Electricity Markets
Alvin K. Klevorick
8. Time-Varying Retail Electricity Prices: Theory and Practice
Severin Borenstein
9. Transmission Market Design
William W. Hogan
10. Ensuring Generation Adequacy in Competitive Electricity Markets
Shmuel S. Oren
11. Perspectives from Policymakers
Pat Wood III, Thomas R. Kuhn, and Joe Barton
Conclusion: Final Thoughts
James M. Griffin and Steven L. Puller
Author Index
Subject Index

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